Honest in the Worst Way
By Philip Giraldi | April 01, 2010
When the beefsteak mine bonds salesman J. Frothingham Waterbury in the W.C. Fields movie The Bank Dick wanted to unload his worthless paper he put his hand on his heart and said with a straight face, “I want to show you I’m honest in the worst way.” Well, Frothingham Waterbury had nothing on today’s masters of the sharp deal former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and ex head of the Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. The problem with the two gentlemen and many others who have formed the detritus of both Republican and Democratic administrations over the past twenty years is that they sometimes fail to understand where private interests end and the public interest begins. They and others like them are a valuable commodity to large private contractors because they can exploit their former positions to obtain access to colleagues who remain in government. They also give a measure of credibility to their new employers based on their former status, which can be used to sell goods and services. The relentless pursuit of the fast buck obscures that there is a public trust that is being betrayed. Because the American people want to believe in the integrity of the message being conveyed by the Chertoffs and McConnells it is easy to forget that they are really just salesmen offering wares that may not actually be needed.
If the public wonders how the US government has gotten so big and expensive they might well look at the huge security industry that has grown dramatically enabled by senior managers like McConnell and Chertoff moving between government jobs and the private sector, often a revolving door that spawns fat government no-bid contracts. Did Dick Cheney get rich with Halliburton because he was a business genius or because he was put in a position where his government contacts could be exploited to bring in the cash even when the American taxpayer had no need of what was being purveyed? How did people like Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle become multi-millionaires?
McConnell has surfaced most recently, in the Washington Post, in a lengthy opinion piece warning about the cybersecurity threat. Now, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about cyber-terrorism, but I would bet that McConnell’s argument that the US is facing something like a new Pearl Harbor is just a tad overstated. It is essentially the same argument that has been played and replayed over the past nine years by those who want big government and large budgets. What McConnell does understand very clearly is that if the United States government spends some hundreds of billions of dollars in protecting the country against cyber attack, his company, Booz Allen Hamilton, will get a very large slice of that pie. Booz is currently one of the largest government contractors and it is already advising clients on cybersecurity, which makes the article in the Washington Post pretty much free advertising combined with special pleading.
McConnell cites two instances of cyber-threat, one the hacking of Google late last year “emanating from China” and an attack in 2008 that compromised the security of 2,500 companies. McConnell would like to see a huge government-funded effort to deal with the threat both preemptively and through deterrence. Now I am sure McConnell knows perfectly well that al-Qaeda does not have a cyber division and that a computer or information threat does not actually kill anyone. Cyber attack is primarily an economic weapon, used to steal valuable information, often somewhat akin to vandalism when it interferes with the ability of systems to communicate and exchange information. And there are commercially available defenses against it that already exist. If you can hack into a system there are ways to build walls to prevent that. Companies that have identified cyber threats can go out and buy software and engage IT experts who can and do protect their systems. It is just a matter of weighing risk and providing protection that is commensurate. A massive government program to involve the private sector would make everyone buy into the same level of security, which is just not needed in most cases. And the key word is “buy.” It would also make McConnell and Booz Allen even richer.
And then there is Michael Chertoff. Chertoff seized the bully pulpit in the wake of the Christmas underwear bomber, writing op ed pieces and appearing all over the media to advocate the use of expensive scanners at airports to prevent such incidents. There were only two problems with the hype. First, tests revealed that the scanners would not necessarily have detected the device used by the bomber and second, Chertoff’s company The Chertoff Group had a consulting relationship with the company Rapiscan Systems that made the scanners. Which means that Chertoff, who appeared to be providing disinterested expert advice, would benefit personally if the scanners are placed in airports. It was reported last week that Chertoff has also decided to become a board member at BAE Systems, a top defense contractor that has defrauded the US government. The British company has agreed to pay $447 million in fines to the American and British governments to settle charges of corruption, including an alleged $2 billion bribing of Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar, who was Ambassador to the US at the time.
McConnells and Chertoffs have always been around. During the Civil War contractors in Philadelphia made army boots out of cardboard and uniform jackets that fell apart after being worn once or twice. Trying to make money off of government contracts goes back even farther than that with Cicero having prosecuted corrupt governors who robbed the treasury of the Roman Republic. Today’s snake oil vendors will always be with us, particularly as both Republicans and Democrats appear to be enamored of the war on terror which will apparently go on forever and everywhere. As it is global and terror is a tactic you can bet it will never end until it bankrupts the United States, which just might come sooner than most people think likely.
What is lacking is any restraint on the activity of the promoters of the war economy. The salesmen for total war would not be so dangerous if they were not portrayed as experts and given a platform to parlay their former government positions into private gain. A skeptical media would be nice, asking hard questions about what financial interests former senior government officials might have. But we are long past the point where we might expect the media to do its job or do anything at all but promote the long war, which presumably sells newspapers and ad time on television. It would also be nice to stop senior government officials from setting up their own companies like The Chertoff Group that then turning around to do contracting with the government. That’s not only unseemly, it involves potential conflict of interest and could lead to more serious forms of corruption. It would be far better to close the revolving door completely and send the Chertoffs and McConnells off to a comfortable retirement somewhere where they would no longer be reaching into in the taxpayers’ pockets to fund scanners we don’t need and a new global conflict, which, if the pattern holds true to form, will no doubt be dubbed the war on cyber.
Read more by Philip Giraldi
- The Crisis That Wasn’t – March 24th, 2010
Regulator seeks to rein in energy market trading by big Wall Street firms
By David Cho | Washington Post | April 1, 2010
The nation’s commodities regulator is proposing to limit the vast amounts of oil, natural gas and other vital goods the world’s biggest investment firms can buy and sell, seeking to eliminate the unfettered access these companies have had to energy markets for 20 years.
The rule would also force this highly lucrative trading into daylight, requiring for the first time that the public be told which companies have special permission to trade commodities with virtually no constraints.
By reversing course, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, under its activist chairman, Gary Gensler, is trying to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a few large businesses. For example, a single firm, the United States Oil Fund, was able to gain the rights to nearly one-fourth of all the publicly traded crude oil scheduled for delivery during one month last spring, the fund’s head said in an interview.
Advocates of the commission’s proposal have said the influx of Wall Street money has led to violent price swings. In 2008, the price of a barrel of crude oil leapt to a record of more than $147 and within months crashed to below $34. This volatility not only disrupts household budgets but also makes it hard for food manufacturers, airlines and other companies to get the goods they need when they need them, the advocates said.
Traditionally, commercial companies were the main players on the commodities markets, buying contracts for oil, for example, that guaranteed future delivery on a specific date for a locked-in price. But Wall Street banks eventually discovered that they could trade these contracts like financial securities and make money without ever taking delivery of the goods. Before long, the banks won exemptions from federal trading restrictions and were able to speculate on unlimited amounts.
If a majority of the five-member panel approve the commission’s latest proposal, the rule would dramatically scale back the exemptions given to firms such as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. Although the government keeps the identities of the firms private, financial analysts have figured out some of them.
Separately, the Senate is considering a broad overhaul of the financial oversight system that in part would regulate for the first time the trading of commodities contracts in private transactions, which occur away from the established exchanges and are known as “over the counter.” The legislation would force nearly all of the trading onto public exchanges, undercutting the financial advantage firms get from their ability to keep the prices they pay secret.
This shadow world of private deals exists beyond the purview of regulators, and federal officials estimate that the value of these deals is many times that of transactions conducted on open exchanges. If big financial firms win the right to continue trading huge amounts of oil, natural gas and other goods in private deals, they would simply move their business off the exchanges and maintain their dominance, some commission officials warn.
No company has benefited more than Goldman Sachs, market analysts say. During the financial crisis, when most of the firm’s other business activities were suffering, commodities trading produced “particularly strong results,” according to its annual report. Goldman does not disclose how much it earned from these trades. But along with its bonds and currency divisions, commodities activities generated about half of its net revenue of $45 billion in 2009, Goldman reported.
Financial analysts estimated that these activities in typical years account for about a tenth of the firm’s revenue. The analysts added that the commodities division is one of the bank’s crown jewels, noting that many of Goldman’s top executives emerged from that operation, including chief executive Lloyd Blankfein… Full article
Will the Washington Crew Ever Notice the Housing Bubble?
By Dean Baker | The Guardian Unlimited | March 30, 2010
Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the rest of the crew running economic policy somehow could not see the housing bubble as it grew to more than $8 trillion. It really should have been hard to miss. Nationwide house prices had just tracked overall inflation for 100 years from 1895 to 1995. Suddenly in 1995, coinciding with the stock bubble, house prices began to hugely outpace the overall rate of inflation.
There was no explanation for this run-up in house prices on either the supply or demand side of the housing market. Furthermore, there was no unusual increase in rents, providing further confirmation that fundamentals were not behind the increase in house prices. Finally, in contrast to a story of housing shortages driving up house prices, vacancy rates were at record levels.
But the super-sleuths at the Fed, Treasury and other centers of decision-making just could not see the bubble. They couldn’t even see the flood of bogus mortgages being spit out by the millions and packaged into mortgage-backed securities and more complex instruments.
As a result of this astounding incompetence, we are now living through the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Because Greenspan and Bernanke and the rest messed up, tens of millions of workers are out of work. Close to one in four mortgages are underwater and the baby boom cohort has seen much of its wealth destroyed as they reach the edge of retirement. In short, as Joe Biden would say, this was a f***ing big mistake.
Remarkably, the folks in charge seem to have learned zip. They still have no clue about the housing bubble. How else can anyone explain the Obama Administration’s latest proposal for helping out underwater homeowners?
If the point is to help homeowners then there are two incredibly simple questions that must be asked:
- Are homeowners paying less under the plan than they would to rent the same place?
- Are homeowners going to end up with equity in their home?
These are the key questions, because if we can’t answer “yes” to at least one of them, then we are not helping homeowners. If we can’t answer “yes” to at least one of these questions, then taxpayer dollars being put into the program are helping banks, not homeowners.
Unfortunately, it seems no one in the Obama Administration has yet been told about the housing bubble. There is no evidence that they ever considered these questions in designing the latest policy to “help” homeowners.
The program will potentially pay banks and loan servicers up to $12 billion to write off principle on mortgages. In exchange, the government will guarantee new mortgages through the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Those familiar with the housing market will note that house prices are still falling and must fall by close to 15 percent to get back to their long-term trend. If house prices continue to fall, then the vast majority of the homeowners that take part in this program are likely to never accrue any equity in their home.
Furthermore, the FHA is likely to incur substantial losses on these loan guarantees, as homeowners will again find themselves underwater and many will be unable to pay off their mortgages when they sell their home. Because the FHA hugely expanded its role in the housing market in the last two years, without paying attention to falling prices, it now is below its minimum capital requirement. It will suffer additional losses and fall further below its capital requirements as a result of this program. By the way, the losses to the FHA and the taxpayers are money in the pockets of the banks, but no reason to mention that detail.
For anyone who can see an $8 trillion housing bubble, this is all as clear as day. There is nothing complex about a story in which the government buys banks out of bad mortgages. But the Washington policymakers could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble before it wrecked the economy and apparently still haven’t noticed it even after the fact.
It’s great to know that there are good-paying jobs for people with no discernible skills. But do those jobs have to involve running the economy?
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy. See article on original website.
Greenpeace’s Corporate Overreach
Controversial Hire is an Opportunity to Start Building a Democratic Environmental Movement
By DRU OJA JAY, Montreal – March 11, 2010
Greenpeace has come a long way since the Rainbow Warrior, the retrofitted trawler used to challenge nuclear testing and whaling, was enough of a threat that the French government dispatched commandoes to sink her in 1985.
On February 13th, Greenpeace International announced that was hiring ForestEthics founder Tzeporah Berman as director of its global climate and energy campaign. The move has provoked intense outrage among many Greenpeace supporters, staff and activists. The conflict raging within Greenpeace has the potential to be an important first step in addressing two heretofore taboo subjects in the environmental movement: the corrupting influence of corporate cash and the absence of democratic structures.
The announcement marked an acceleration of a long-term drift away from Greenpeace’s origins in direct action environmental and anti-war work. Back in 2007, Greenpeace lauded Coca-Cola for its “commitment to use climate-friendly coolers and vending machines.” (The same year, campaigns against Coke’s complicity in paramilitary assassination of union leaders in Colombia were in full swing, while a year earlier, the government of Kerala had banned Coca-Cola after a revolt over overuse and pollution of groundwater.)
If the Coke deal was Greenpeace testing the waters of corporate collaboration, hiring Berman is Greenpeace jumping in.
The hire marks a full-circle return for Berman, who rose to prominence within Greenpeace but left in 2000 to found ForestEthics, where she broke new ground in the “collaborative approach” to conservation. According to Berman’s ethos, “the notion of activists vs. corporations, of good vs. evil, no longer applies… It’s about creating dialogue, and finding the solutions that will be mutually beneficial to all.”
While heading up ForestEthics, Berman undertook a series of collaborations with companies like Home Depot, Dell, Staples and most recently General Electric. Immediately before being hired by Greenpeace, Berman headed PowerUp Canada, an initiative funded mostly by the Tides and Ivey Foundations that pushed the privatization of British Columbia’s rivers in the name of green energy. She has since backed away from the fruits of her efforts, claiming she does not support the privatization of “all” rivers in BC.
Grassroots environmentalists in Canada were furious at Berman long before she took the Greenpeace job, starting with the elimination of public oversight during her stint as lead negotiator of the Great Bear Rainforest deal. (In the deal that was finally signed, only 32 per cent of the rainforest was protected.)
Berman’s return to Greenpeace as it approaches its 40th year of existence has stoked the ire of the organization’s supporters to white-hot levels.
In an email that has made the rounds of Canadian environmental lists, Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler called Berman’s hire “an all-out betrayal of environmentalism, of the groups and activists who built the environmental movement in Canada and in the world, and a betrayal of the Earth itself.”
70 people have signed a statement calling on Greenpeace to rescind Berman’s hire and “renounce collaboration and partnership with destructive corporations”.
Greenpeace staffers and activists in Canada — where Berman is well-known, and where Greenpeace has a high-profile anti-tar sands campaign underway — have privately expressed a mix of bafflement and rage at the decision.
One anonymous “Greenpeace activist or staff” remarked in testimony posted to http://www.SaveGreenpeace.org: “Greenpeace actually started the Kyoto Plus campaign to battle Power Up, the organization that Tzeporah started. And now they’re hiring her. The hypocrisy blows my mind. It’s astonishing. It’s like they just hired the devil. No one will take us seriously… with decisions like this.”
Greenpeace’s decision comes at a point when questions about Environmental organizations lack of democracy or accountability, and their corresponding closeness with corporations involved in environmental destruction, are looming larger than ever.
A recent report in The Nation ends with a 30-year veteran of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) stating outright: “We’re close to a civil war in the environmental movement. For too long, all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out by this beast of these insider groups, who achieve almost nothing…. We need to create new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals.”
The report, whose author was subsequently interviewed on Democracy Now!, raises issues that are echoed in the anonymous testimonies of disgruntled Greenpeacers. Phrases like “disenfranchised,” “no consultation,” “no transparency,” “more concerned with getting a ‘seat at the table,'” point repeatedly to the same pair of problems: addiction to corporate and foundation cash and a total lack of democracy.
While the debate rages inside Greenpeace, early reports seem to indicate that many on the inside are channeling their frustration at the lack of consultation and their own disempowerment into rage against the small number of people willing to publicly oppose the Berman hire and discuss her record.
The frustration is understandable, but if the goal is a strong, democratic environmental movement, there are much better targets for their rage.
The overreach of Greenpeace’s turn towards corporate collaboration and the ensuing grassroots backlash affords the rarest of moments: an opportunity to articulate and push for demands that normally bounce harmlessly off of the bureaucratic carapace of big organizations like Greenpeace.
It’s an opportunity to demand an end to corporate collaboration, but it’s also an opportunity to demand democratic accountability to a supporting membership that is there because of the organization’s forty years of direct action. Small-scale financial supporters, volunteer activists and staff alike have no formal say in Greenpeace’s strategic direction. Nearly all of their complaints emanate from the frustration created by that contradiction.
At a moment where tensions are at their highest, the irony of an NRDC functionary describing “civil war” and calling for “new organizations that represent the fundamentals of environmentalism and have real goals” while Greenpeacers seethe, lash out at those pointing to Berman’s record, or quit, should not be lost on anyone.
Greenpeace International’s head office has raised the stakes. If the resistance to Berman’s hire is broken, the descent of the organization will be far swifter than the Coked-up years leading to its fortieth birthday. If the resistance continues to grow and spreads to supporters of other unaccountable, corporate-partnered big greens, then we’ll win with Greenpeace or without it.
If Greenpeace’s transformation into another public relations contractor for corporations and foundations is allowed to continue, everyone loses.
Corporate collaboration will never do more than slightly curtail environmental destruction. In many cases, the results of collaboration have been disastrous. The only things that can stop it are organizations rooted in communities and grassroots movements that are immune to “leaders” selling them out for money and ego.
If that’s what folks working with and supporting Greenpeace want, they won’t get a better shot at it than this one.
Tzeporah Berman is slated to start work in April.
Dru Oja Jay is co-author of the report Offsetting Resistance: The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the Athabasca River. He is a member of the editorial collective of the Dominion, and lives in Montreal.
Congressional Junket Front-Page News Unless It’s a Trip to Israel
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
The ongoing controversy regarding Representative Charles Rangel (D, NY-15) and trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008 has refreshed the discourse on privately funded congressional travel. Following the Jack Abramoff scandal of 2006 stricter limits were adopted by the House in order to expose and prevent corporate-sponsored junkets. The new ethics rules stipulated that members could not accept trip funding from non-profits that had received corporate donations, which would constitute lobbying.
Rep. Rangel was investigated for having violated these rules by attending conferences in St. Maarten sponsored by the Carib News Foundation. Major corporations, including Citigroup and Pfizer, however, appear to have earmarked donations to Carib News specifically for the trips. Rep. Rangel’s staff was apparently aware of the connection between the corporations and Carib News, whereas Rep. Rangel maintains that he was never informed of such a link. Therein lies the debate: Is Rep. Rangel to be held accountable for the improper conduct of his staff?
The case, moreover, exposes the inconsistencies of the ethics rules constraining congressional behavior. The rules intend to restrict the influence of lobbyists; however, they do nothing to constrain so-called “educational” organizations. Under the current rules, a non-profit like the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF) is considered an independent entity from its parent group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which self-identifies as “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby.”
Under this arrangement we are to assume that AIPAC’s hard-line, rightist views of the Arab-Israeli conflict have not once influenced the “education” imparted on the 480 trips (at a cost of $4,024,845) sponsored by AIEF since Jan. 2000. Unfortunately, the link between AIEF’s “educational” efforts and AIPAC’s lobbying are as obvious as they appear. Members and staffers participating in the trips are bombarded by a one-sided distortion of reality. The perspectives generated by these “educational” sojourns rarely include moderate or left-leaning voices in Israel. When, if ever, was B’Tselem or Peace Now involved in the “education” process? Furthermore, the trips neglect the Palestinian perspective altogether.
A spade will always be a spade and a lobby will always be a lobby, whether or not it markets itself as an “educational” organization. Clearly, the ethics rules in place do not do enough to prevent the undue influence of lobbies on the legislative process.
For further information regarding trips sponsored by AIEF and similar groups please consult the following table:
Top Ten Members in Terms of Approved Trips Sponsored by Pro-Israel Groups Pro-Israel Groups Funded Travel*
1 Hoyer, Steny H (D, Maryland District 5 ) $142,426.02 17
2 Berkley, Shelley (D, Nevada District 1 ) $102,910.67 14
3 Blunt, Roy (R, Missouri District 7 ) $69,356.98 10
4 Kirk, Mark (R, Illinois District 10 ) $64,503.09 9
5 Green, Gene (D, Texas District 29 ) $50,527.94 4
6 Wexler, Robert (D, Florida District 19 ) $46,171.94 5
7 Pence, Mike (R, Indiana District 6 ) $45,288.05 5
8 Gohmert, Louis B Jr (R, Texas District 1 ) $44,753.60 3
9 Bachmann, Michele (R, Minnesota District 6 ) $44,381.14 3
10 Langevin, Jim (D, Rhode Island District 2 ) $43,302.15 7
Member Pro-Israel Groups Funded Travel*
* – Trips are those approved, which includes all trips from office both by members and by staffers…
Abercrombie, Neil (D, Hawaii District 1 ) $0.00 0
Ackerman, Gary (D, New York District 5 ) $13,504.03 7
Aderholt, Robert B (R, Alabama District 4 ) $0.00 0
Adler, John H (D, New Jersey District 3 ) $18,235.00 1
Akaka, Daniel K (D, Hawaii Senate) $4,610.00 1
Akin, Todd (R, Missouri District 2 ) $0.00 0
Alexander, Lamar (R, Tennessee Senate) $3,650.85 1
Alexander, Rodney (R, Louisiana District 5 ) $15,763.13 2
Altmire, Jason (D, Pennsylvania District 4 ) $13,656.90 1
Andrews, Robert E (D, New Jersey District 1 ) $0.00 0
Arcuri, Michael (D, New York District 24 ) $16,811.00 1
Austria, Steve C (R, Ohio District 7 ) $7,325.84 1
Baca, Joe (D, California District 43 ) $0.00 0
Bachmann, Michele (R, Minnesota District 6 ) $44,381.14 3
Bachus, Spencer (R, Alabama District 6 ) $2,588.40 1
Baird, Brian (D, Washington District 3 ) $2,694.94 1
Baldwin, Tammy (D, Wisconsin District 2 ) $23,918.83 2
Barrasso, John A (R, Wyoming Senate) $36,555.99 2
Barrett, Gresham (R, South Carolina District 3 ) $4,850.00 1
Barrow, John (D, Georgia District 12 ) $12,484.35 2
Bartlett, Roscoe G (R, Maryland District 6 ) $0.00 0
Barton, Joe (R, Texas District 6 ) $0.00 0
Baucus, Max (D, Montana Senate) $0.00 0
Bayh, Evan (D, Indiana Senate) $5,435.23 2
Bean, Melissa (D, Illinois District 8 ) $25,755.16 3
Becerra, Xavier (D, California District 31 ) $13,234.49 2
Begich, Mark (D, Alaska Senate) $0.00 0
Bennet, Michael F (D, Colorado Senate) $0.00 0
Bennett, Robert F (R, Utah Senate) $5,201.99 3
Berkley, Shelley (D, Nevada District 1 ) $102,910.67 14
Berman, Howard L (D, California District 28 ) $7,595.58 7
Berry, Marion (D, Arkansas District 1 ) $0.00 0
Biden, Joseph R Jr (D, Delaware Senate) $2,500.00 3
Biggert, Judy (R, Illinois District 13 ) $18,853.62 2
Bilbray, Brian P (R, California District 50 ) $0.00 0
Bilirakis, Gus (R, Florida District 9 ) $10,391.01 1
Bingaman, Jeff (D, New Mexico Senate) $0.00 0
Bishop, Rob (R, Utah District 1 ) $14,376.98 1
Bishop, Sanford D Jr (D, Georgia District 2 ) $7,639.28 2
Bishop, Timothy H (D, New York District 1 ) $5,669.82 1
Blackburn, Marsha (R, Tennessee District 7 ) $0.00 0
Blumenauer, Earl (D, Oregon District 3 ) $0.00 0
Blunt, Roy (R, Missouri District 7 ) $69,356.98 10
Boccieri, John A (D, Ohio District 16 ) $0.00 0
Boehner, John (R, Ohio District 8 ) $17,096.91 2
Bond, Christopher “Kit” (R, Missouri Senate) $13,043.19 2
Bonner, Jo (R, Alabama District 1 ) $17,297.85 2
Bono Mack, Mary (R, California District 45 ) $0.00 0
Boozman, John (R, Arkansas District 3 ) $13,746.69 2
Bordallo, Madeleine Z (D, Guam At Large) $6,599.15 1
Boren, Dan (D, Oklahoma District 2 ) $0.00 0
Boswell, Leonard L (D, Iowa District 3 ) $8,690.55 1
Boucher, Rick (D, Virginia District 9 ) $0.00 0
Boustany, Charles W Jr (R, Louisiana District 7 ) $5,258.27 1
Boxer, Barbara (D, California Senate) $5,422.96 2
Boyd, Allen (D, Florida District 2 ) $14,682.09 3
Brady, Kevin (R, Texas District 8 ) $0.00 0
Brady, Robert A (D, Pennsylvania District 1 ) $0.00 0
Braley, Bruce (D, Iowa District 1 ) $0.00 0
Bright, Bobby (D, Alabama District 2 ) $16,249.04 1
Broun, Paul Jr (R, Georgia District 10 ) $0.00 0
Brown, Corrine (D, Florida District 3 ) $2,823.98 1
Brown, Henry (R, South Carolina District 1 ) $0.00 0
Brown, Scott (R, Massachusetts Senate) $0.00 0
Brown, Sherrod (D, Ohio Senate) $0.00 0
Brown-Waite, Ginny (R, Florida District 5 ) $28,533.14 2
Brownback, Sam (R, Kansas Senate) $15,275.43 4
Buchanan, Vernon (R, Florida District 13 ) $21,329.00 1
Bunning, Jim (R, Kentucky Senate) $4,973.51 1
Burgess, Michael (R, Texas District 26 ) $0.00 0
Burr, Richard (R, North Carolina Senate) $0.00 0
Burris, Roland (D, Illinois Senate) $0.00 0
Burton, Dan (R, Indiana District 5 ) $3,161.50 1
Butterfield, G K (D, North Carolina District 1 ) $0.00 0
Buyer, Steve (R, Indiana District 4 ) $0.00 0
Byrd, Robert C (D, West Virginia Senate) $0.00 0
Calvert, Ken (R, California District 44 ) $0.00 0
Camp, Dave (R, Michigan District 4 ) $5,537.60 1
Campbell, John (R, California District 48 ) $0.00 0
Cantor, Eric (R, Virginia District 7 ) $129,054.90 17
Cantwell, Maria (D, Washington Senate) $7,493.74 2
Cao, Joseph (R, Louisiana District 2 ) $0.00 0
Capito, Shelley Moore (R, West Virginia District 2 ) $13,791.22 1
Capps, Lois (D, California District 23 ) $0.00 0
Capuano, Michael E (D, Massachusetts District 8 ) $9,271.80 2
Cardin, Ben (D, Maryland Senate) $0.00 0
Cardoza, Dennis (D, California District 18 ) $13,849.45 3
Carnahan, Russ (D, Missouri District 3 ) $21,278.41 2
Carney, Chris (D, Pennsylvania District 10 ) $5,258.27 1
Carper, Tom (D, Delaware Senate) $11,046.74 2
Carson, Andre (D, Indiana District 7 ) $0.00 0
Carter, John (R, Texas District 31 ) $20,859.13 2
Casey, Bob (D, Pennsylvania Senate) $5,816.00 1
Cassidy, Bill (R, Louisiana District 6 ) $0.00 0
Castle, Michael N (R, Delaware District 1 ) $0.00 0
Castor, Kathy (D, Florida District 11 ) $0.00 0
Chaffetz, Jason (R, Utah District 3 ) $15,813.47 1
Chambliss, Saxby (R, Georgia Senate) $6,999.91 2
Chandler, Ben (D, Kentucky District 6 ) $0.00 0
Childers, Travis W (D, Mississippi District 1 ) $15,449.04 1
Christian-Christensen, Donna (D, Virgin Islands At Large) $0.00 0
Chu, Judy (D, California District 32 ) $0.00 0
Clarke, Yvette D (D, New York District 11 ) $0.00 0
Clay, William L Jr (D, Missouri District 1 ) $2,694.94 1
Cleaver, Emanuel (D, Missouri District 5 ) $0.00 0
Clyburn, James E (D, South Carolina District 6 ) $25,065.52 4
Coble, Howard (R, North Carolina District 6 ) $0.00 0
Coburn, Tom (R, Oklahoma Senate) $0.00 0
Cochran, Thad (R, Mississippi Senate) $8,364.76 2
Coffman, Mike (R, Colorado District 6 ) $14,624.33
Cohen, Stephen Ira (D, Tennessee District 9 ) $10,444.86 1
Cole, Tom (R, Oklahoma District 4 ) $7,705.02 2
Collins, Susan M (R, Maine Senate) $8,387.92 3
Conaway, Mike (R, Texas District 11 ) $21,495.70 1
Connolly, Gerry (D, Virginia District 11 )
Conrad, Kent (D, North Dakota Senate) $0.00 0
Conyers, John Jr (D, Michigan District 14 ) $0.00 0
Cooper, Jim (D, Tennessee District 5 ) $0.00 0
Corker, Bob (R, Tennessee Senate) $0.00 0
Cornyn, John (R, Texas Senate) $11,922.83 4
Costa, Jim (D, California District 20 ) $14,623.94 2
Costello, Jerry F (D, Illinois District 12 ) $3,877.00 2
Courtney, Joe (D, Connecticut District 2 ) $0.00 0
Crapo, Mike (R, Idaho Senate) $8,690.62 1
Crenshaw, Ander (R, Florida District 4 ) $0.00 0
Crowley, Joseph (D, New York District 7 ) $37,670.20 10
Cuellar, Henry (D, Texas District 28 ) $0.00 0
Culberson, John (R, Texas District 7 ) $0.00 0
Cummings, Elijah E (D, Maryland District 7 ) $3,151.25 1
Dahlkemper, Kathleen (D, Pennsylvania District 3 ) $0.00 0
Davis, Artur (D, Alabama District 7 ) $12,499.46 10
Davis, Danny K (D, Illinois District 7 ) $14,838.20 3
Davis, Geoff (R, Kentucky District 4 ) $24,626.40 1
Davis, Lincoln (D, Tennessee District 4 ) $15,446.04 1
Davis, Susan A (D, California District 53 ) $14,039.70 2
Deal, Nathan (R, Georgia District 9 ) $0.00 0
DeFazio, Peter (D, Oregon District 4 ) $0.00 0
DeGette, Diana (D, Colorado District 1 ) $8,646.81 1
Delahunt, Bill (D, Massachusetts District 10 ) $2,587.90 1
DeLauro, Rosa L (D, Connecticut District 3 ) $3,292.00 1
DeMint, James W (R, South Carolina Senate) $18,324.36 2
Dent, Charlie (R, Pennsylvania District 15 ) $17,112.40 1
Diaz-Balart, Lincoln (R, Florida District 21 ) $0.00 0
Diaz-Balart, Mario (R, Florida District 25 ) $3,761.56 1
Dicks, Norm (D, Washington District 6 ) $2,131.06 1
Dingell, John D (D, Michigan District 15 ) $0.00 0
Dodd, Chris (D, Connecticut Senate) $2,323.04 2
Doggett, Lloyd (D, Texas District 25 ) $0.00 0
Donnelly, Joe (D, Indiana District 2 ) $0.00 0
Dorgan, Byron L (D, North Dakota Senate) $0.00 0
Doyle, Mike (D, Pennsylvania District 14 ) $2,131.00 1
Dreier, David (R, California District 26 ) $7,680.99 1
Driehaus, Steve (D, Ohio District 1 ) $9,401.02 1
Duncan, John J (Jimmy) Jr (R, Tennessee District 2 ) $0.00 0
Durbin, Dick (D, Illinois Senate) $5,459.45 3
Edwards, Chet (D, Texas District 17 ) $0.00 0
Edwards, Donna (D, Maryland District 4 ) $0.00 0
Ehlers, Vernon J (R, Michigan District 3 ) $0.00 0
Ellison, Keith (D, Minnesota District 5 ) $22,023.89 2
Ellsworth, Brad (D, Indiana District 8 ) $15,437.04 1
Emerson, Jo Ann (R, Missouri District 8 ) $0.00 0
Engel, Eliot L (D, New York District 17 ) $28,854.98 9
Ensign, John (R, Nevada Senate) $2,828.98 1
Enzi, Mike (R, Wyoming Senate) $0.00 0
Eshoo, Anna (D, California District 14 ) $0.00 0
Etheridge, Bob (D, North Carolina District 2 ) $0.00 0
Faleomavaega, Eni F H (D, American Samoa At Large) $32,598.15 2
Fallin, Mary (R, Oklahoma District 5 ) $23,937.93 2
Farr, Sam (D, California District 17 ) $6,340.72 1
Fattah, Chaka (D, Pennsylvania District 2 ) $4,973.84 1
Feingold, Russ (D, Wisconsin Senate) $0.00 0
Feinstein, Dianne (D, California Senate) $2,694.95 1
Filner, Bob (D, California District 51 ) $0.00 0
Flake, Jeff (R, Arizona District 6 ) $11,584.20 1
Fleming, John Calvin Jr (R, Louisiana District 4 ) $21,134.56 2
Forbes, J Randy (R, Virginia District 4 ) $11,780.00 1
Fortenberry, Jeffrey Lane (R, Nebraska District 1 ) $0.00 0
Foster, Bill (D, Illinois District 14 ) $18,955.50 1
Foxx, Virginia (R, North Carolina District 5 ) $18,291.52 2
Frank, Barney (D, Massachusetts District 4 ) $7,146.82 5
Franken, Al (D, Minnesota Senate)
Franks, Trent (R, Arizona District 2 ) $21,359.70 1
Frelinghuysen, Rodney (R, New Jersey District 11 ) $0.00 0
Fudge, Marcia L (D, Ohio District 11 ) $0.00 0
Gallegly, Elton (R, California District 24 ) $0.00 0
Garamendi, John (D, California District 10 )
Garrett, Scott (R, New Jersey District 5 ) $9,559.62 1
Gerlach, Jim (R, Pennsylvania District 6 ) $7,942.00 1
Giffords, Gabrielle (D, Arizona District 8 ) $15,049.12 2
Gillibrand, Kirsten (D, New York Senate)
Gingrey, Phil (R, Georgia District 11 ) $9,716.84 1
Gohmert, Louis B Jr (R, Texas District 1 ) $44,753.60 3
Gonzalez, Charlie A (D, Texas District 20 ) $3,570.29 1
Goodlatte, Bob (R, Virginia District 6 ) $14,589.49 1
Gordon, Bart (D, Tennessee District 6 ) $0.00 0
Graham, Lindsey (R, South Carolina Senate) $14,360.74 2
Granger, Kay (R, Texas District 12 ) $0.00 0
Grassley, Chuck (R, Iowa Senate) $4,352.28 1
Graves, Sam (R, Missouri District 6 ) $0.00 0
Grayson, Alan (D, Florida District 8 ) $0.00 0
Green, Al (D, Texas District 9 ) $5,452.47 1
Green, Gene (D, Texas District 29 ) $50,527.94 4
Gregg, Judd (R, New Hampshire Senate) $0.00 0
Griffith, Parker (D, Alabama District 5 ) $15,449.04 1
Grijalva, Raul M (D, Arizona District 7 ) $0.00 0
Guthrie, Steven Brett (R, Kentucky District 2 ) $0.00 0
Gutierrez, Luis V (D, Illinois District 4 ) $10,906.00 1
Hagan, Kay R (D, North Carolina Senate) $0.00 0
Hall, John (D, New York District 19 ) $3,200.00 1
Hall, Ralph M (R, Texas District 4 ) $0.00 0
Halvorson, Deborah (D, Illinois District 11 ) $24,850.27 2
Hare, Phil (D, Illinois District 17 ) $15,586.41 2
Harkin, Tom (D, Iowa Senate) $0.00 0
Harman, Jane (D, California District 36 ) $5,293.60 1
Harper, Gregg (R, Mississippi District 3 ) $22,230.53 2
Hastings, Alcee L (D, Florida District 23 ) $4,490.28 1
Hastings, Doc (R, Washington District 4 ) $24,753.40 2
Hatch, Orrin G (R, Utah Senate) $0.00 0
Heinrich, Martin (D, New Mexico District 1 ) $0.00 0
Heller, Dean (R, Nevada District 2 ) $0.00 0
Hensarling, Jeb (R, Texas District 5 ) $7,358.99 1
Herger, Wally (R, California District 2 ) $0.00 0
Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie (D, South Dakota District 1 ) $0.00 0
Higgins, Brian M (D, New York District 27 ) $7,607.37 2
Hill, Baron (D, Indiana District 9 ) $12,077.03 3
Himes, Jim (D, Connecticut District 4 ) $18,131.04 1
Hinchey, Maurice (D, New York District 22 ) $9,219.00 3
Hinojosa, Ruben (D, Texas District 15 ) $0.00 0
Hirono, Mazie K (D, Hawaii District 2 ) $12,258.26 1
Hodes, Paul W (D, New Hampshire District 2 ) $19,159.40 1
Hoekstra, Peter (R, Michigan District 2 ) $10,214.00 1
Holden, Tim (D, Pennsylvania District 17 ) $0.00 0
Holt, Rush (D, New Jersey District 12 ) $0.00 0
Honda, Mike (D, California District 15 ) $9,185.43 2
Hoyer, Steny H (D, Maryland District 5 ) $142,426.02 17
Hunter, Duncan D (R, California District 52 )
Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R, Texas Senate) $0.00 0
Inglis, Bob (R, South Carolina District 4 ) $0.00 0
Inhofe, James M (R, Oklahoma Senate) $0.00 0
Inouye, Daniel K (D, Hawaii Senate) $0.00 0
Inslee, Jay R (D, Washington District 1 ) $0.00 0
Isakson, Johnny (R, Georgia Senate) $20,156.06 2
Israel, Steve (D, New York District 2 ) $40,263.08 10
Issa, Darrell (R, California District 49 ) $4,217.20 1
Jackson Lee, Sheila (D, Texas District 18 )
Jackson, Jesse Jr (D, Illinois District 2 ) $24,218.37 4
Jenkins, Lynn (R, Kansas District 2 ) $0.00 0
Johanns, Michael O (R, Nebraska Senate) $0.00 0
Johnson, Eddie Bernice (D, Texas District 30 ) $0.00 0
Johnson, Hank (D, Georgia District 4 ) $5,452.47 1
Johnson, Sam (R, Texas District 3 ) $0.00 0
Johnson, Tim (D, South Dakota Senate) $6,840.00 2
Johnson, Timothy V (R, Illinois District 15 ) $8,241.29 2
Jones, Walter B Jr (R, North Carolina District 3 ) $0.00 0
Jordan, James D (R, Ohio District 4 ) $14,757.74 1
Kagen, Steve (D, Wisconsin District 8 ) $0.00 0
Kanjorski, Paul E (D, Pennsylvania District 11 ) $0.00 0
Kaptur, Marcy (D, Ohio District 9 ) $0.00 0
Kennedy, Patrick J (D, Rhode Island District 1 ) $5,452.47 1
Kerry, John (D, Massachusetts Senate) $0.00 0
Kildee, Dale E (D, Michigan District 5 ) $0.00 0
Kilpatrick, Carolyn Cheeks (D, Michigan District 13 ) $0.00 0
Kilroy, Mary Jo (D, Ohio District 15 )
Kind, Ron (D, Wisconsin District 3 ) $0.00 0
King, Pete (R, New York District 3 ) $11,156.84 2
King, Steven A (R, Iowa District 5 ) $14,140.69 2
Kingston, Jack (R, Georgia District 1 ) $20,347.00 1
Kirk, Mark (R, Illinois District 10 ) $64,503.09 9
Kirk, Paul (D, Massachusetts Senate) $0.00 0
Kirkpatrick, Ann (D, Arizona District 1 ) $18,919.44 1
Kissell, Larry (D, North Carolina District 8 ) $0.00 0
Klein, Ron (D, Florida District 22 ) $0.00 0
Kline, John (R, Minnesota District 2 ) $8,378.65 2
Klobuchar, Amy (D, Minnesota Senate)
Kohl, Herb (D, Wisconsin Senate) $0.00 0
Kosmas, Suzanne (D, Florida District 24 ) $10,075.72 1
Kratovil, Frank M Jr (D, Maryland District 1 ) $16,019.44 1
Kucinich, Dennis J (D, Ohio District 10 ) $0.00 0
Kyl, Jon (R, Arizona Senate) $15,866.15 7
Lamborn, Douglas L (R, Colorado District 5 ) $22,394.72 1
Lance, Leonard (R, New Jersey District 7 ) $18,375.74 1
Landrieu, Mary L (D, Louisiana Senate) $0.00 0
Langevin, Jim (D, Rhode Island District 2 ) $43,302.15 7
Larsen, Rick (D, Washington District 2 ) $6,598.55 1
Larson, John B (D, Connecticut District 1 ) $8,690.92 1
Latham, Tom (R, Iowa District 4 ) $0.00 0
LaTourette, Steven C (R, Ohio District 14 ) $0.00 0
Latta, Robert E (R, Ohio District 5 ) $19,003.74 1
Lautenberg, Frank R (D, New Jersey Senate) $11,919.83 3
Leahy, Patrick (D, Vermont Senate) $0.00 0
Lee, Barbara (D, California District 9 ) $5,968.63 2
Lee, Christopher J (R, New York District 26 ) $15,024.74 1
LeMieux, George S (R, Florida Senate)
Levin, Carl (D, Michigan Senate) $0.00 0
Levin, Sander (D, Michigan District 12 ) $0.00 0
Lewis, Jerry (R, California District 41 ) $0.00 0
Lewis, John (D, Georgia District 5 ) $3,287.00 1
Lieberman, Joe (I, Connecticut Senate) $32,443.97 9
Lincoln, Blanche (D, Arkansas Senate) $3,657.00 1
Linder, John (R, Georgia District 7 ) $0.00 0
Lipinski, Daniel (D, Illinois District 3 ) $0.00 0
LoBiondo, Frank A (R, New Jersey District 2 ) $0.00 0
Loebsack, David (D, Iowa District 2 ) $0.00 0
Lofgren, Zoe (D, California District 16 ) $0.00 0
Lowey, Nita M (D, New York District 18 ) $21,821.70 5
Lucas, Frank D (R, Oklahoma District 3 ) $0.00 0
Luetkemeyer, Blaine (R, Missouri District 9 ) $14,464.36 1
Lugar, Richard G (R, Indiana Senate) $0.00 0
Lujan, Ben R (D, New Mexico District 3 )
Lummis, Cynthia Marie (R, Wyoming District 1 ) $0.00 0
Lungren, Dan (R, California District 3 ) $14,665.04 2
Lynch, Stephen F (D, Massachusetts District 9 ) $4,170.70 1
Mack, Connie (R, Florida District 14 ) $0.00 1
Maffei, Dan (D, New York District 25 )
Maloney, Carolyn B (D, New York District 14 ) $14,131.30 2
Manzullo, Don (R, Illinois District 16 ) $0.00 0
Marchant, Kenny (R, Texas District 24 ) $8,578.52 1
Markey, Betsy (D, Colorado District 4 ) $19,069.94 1
Markey, Edward J (D, Massachusetts District 7 ) $0.00 0
Marshall, Jim (D, Georgia District 8 ) $11,629.00 1
Massa, Eric (D, New York District 29 )
Matheson, Jim (D, Utah District 2 ) $0.00 0
Matsui, Doris O (D, California District 5 ) $0.00 0
McCain, John (R, Arizona Senate) $0.00 0
McCarthy, Carolyn (D, New York District 4 ) $2,493.00 1
McCarthy, Kevin (R, California District 22 ) $0.00 0
McCaskill, Claire (D, Missouri Senate) $0.00 0
McCaul, Michael (R, Texas District 10 ) $0.00 0
McClintock, Tom (R, California District 4 ) $24,355.56 2
McCollum, Betty (D, Minnesota District 4 ) $0.00 0
McConnell, Mitch (R, Kentucky Senate) $7,358.19 2
McCotter, Thad (R, Michigan District 11 ) $0.00 0
McDermott, Jim (D, Washington District 7 ) $10,522.00 1
McGovern, James P (D, Massachusetts District 3 ) $0.00 0
McHenry, Patrick (R, North Carolina District 10 ) $10,280.60 1
McIntyre, Mike (D, North Carolina District 7 ) $0.00 0
McKeon, Howard P (Buck) (R, California District 25 ) $0.00 0
McMahon, Michael E (D, New York District 13 ) $0.00 0
McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (R, Washington District 5 ) $0.00 0
McNerney, Jerry (D, California District 11 ) $17,387.90 1
Meek, Kendrick B (D, Florida District 17 ) $10,876.00 1
Meeks, Gregory W (D, New York District 6 ) $12,925.23 5
Melancon, Charles (D, Louisiana District 3 ) $9,453.07 2
Menendez, Robert (D, New Jersey Senate) $0.00 0
Merkley, Jeff (D, Oregon Senate) $0.00 0
Mica, John L (R, Florida District 7 ) $0.00 0
Michaud, Mike (D, Maine District 2 ) $10,103.33 2
Mikulski, Barbara A (D, Maryland Senate) $4,508.24 2
Miller, Brad (D, North Carolina District 13 ) $12,073.02 2
Miller, Candice S (R, Michigan District 10 ) $0.00 0
Miller, Gary (R, California District 42 ) $12,132.00 1
Miller, George (D, California District 7 ) $0.00 0
Miller, Jeff (R, Florida District 1 ) $10,517.51 2
Minnick, Walter Clifford (D, Idaho District 1 )
Mitchell, Harry E (D, Arizona District 5 ) $16,275.44 1
Mollohan, Alan B (D, West Virginia District 1 ) $0.00 0
Moore, Dennis (D, Kansas District 3 ) $3,936.29 2
Moore, Gwen (D, Wisconsin District 4 ) $4,168.67 1
Moran, Jerry (R, Kansas District 1 ) $28,121.50 1
Moran, Jim (D, Virginia District 8 ) $0.00 0
Murkowski, Lisa (R, Alaska Senate) $2,598.35 1
Murphy, Chris (D, Connecticut District 5 ) $0.00 0
Murphy, Patrick J (D, Pennsylvania District 8 ) $21,335.82 2
Murphy, Scott (D, New York District 20 )
Murphy, Tim (R, Pennsylvania District 18 ) $0.00 0
Murray, Patty (D, Washington Senate) $0.00 0
Murtha, John P (D, Pennsylvania District 12 ) $0.00 0
Myrick, Sue (R, North Carolina District 9 ) $0.00 0
Nadler, Jerrold (D, New York District 8 ) $30,418.22 5
Napolitano, Grace (D, California District 38 ) $0.00 0
Neal, Richard E (D, Massachusetts District 2 ) $0.00 0
Nelson, Ben (D, Nebraska Senate) $2,647.63 1
Nelson, Bill (D, Florida Senate) $0.00 0
Neugebauer, Randy (R, Texas District 19 ) $9,213.84 1
Norton, Eleanor Holmes (D, District of Columbia At Large) $0.00 0
Nunes, Devin Gerald (R, California District 21 ) $23,852.02 3
Nye, Glenn (D, Virginia District 2 ) $9,401.02 1
Oberstar, James L (D, Minnesota District 8 ) $0.00 0
Obey, David R (D, Wisconsin District 7 ) $0.00 0
Olson, Pete (R, Texas District 22 ) $23,295.91 2
Olver, John W (D, Massachusetts District 1 ) $0.00 0
Ortiz, Solomon P (D, Texas District 27 ) $0.00 0
Owens, Bill (D, New York District 23 )
Pallone, Frank Jr (D, New Jersey District 6 ) $15,587.50 3
Pascrell, Bill Jr (D, New Jersey District 8 ) $5,258.27 2
Pastor, Ed (D, Arizona District 4 ) $7,358.99 1
Paul, Ron (R, Texas District 14 ) $0.00 0
Paulsen, Erik (R, Minnesota District 3 ) $4,700.00 1
Payne, Donald M (D, New Jersey District 10 ) $0.00 0
Pelosi, Nancy (D, California District 8 ) $4,793.47 2
Pence, Mike (R, Indiana District 6 ) $45,288.05 5
Perlmutter, Edwin G (D, Colorado District 7 )
Perriello, Tom (D, Virginia District 5 ) $0.00 0
Peters, Gary (D, Michigan District 9 ) $18,971.42 1
Peterson, Collin C (D, Minnesota District 7 ) $0.00 0
Petri, Tom (R, Wisconsin District 6 ) $0.00 0
Pierluisi, Pedro (3, Puerto Rico At Large) $0.00 0
Pingree, Chellie (D, Maine District 1 )
Pitts, Joe (R, Pennsylvania District 16 ) $10,584.85 3
Platts, Todd (R, Pennsylvania District 19 ) $0.00 0
Poe, Ted (R, Texas District 2 ) $0.00 0
Polis, Jared (D, Colorado District 2 )
Pomeroy, Earl (D, North Dakota District 1 )
Posey, Bill (R, Florida District 15 ) $5,452.47 1
Price, David (D, North Carolina District 4 ) $3,650.85 1
Price, Tom (R, Georgia District 6 ) $38,366.70 3
Pryor, Mark (D, Arkansas Senate) $860.50 1
Putnam, Adam H (R, Florida District 12 ) $9,426.94 2
Quigley, Mike (D, Illinois District 5 ) $18,755.18 1
Radanovich, George (R, California District 19 ) $0.00 0
Rahall, Nick (D, West Virginia District 3 ) $0.00 0
Rangel, Charles B (D, New York District 15 )
Reed, Jack (D, Rhode Island Senate) $806.70 1
Rehberg, Denny (R, Montana District 1 ) $4,168.67 1
Reichert, Dave (R, Washington District 8 ) $0.00 0
Reid, Harry (D, Nevada Senate) $19,279.56 4
Reyes, Silvestre (D, Texas District 16 ) $0.00 0
Richardson, Laura (D, California District 37 ) $22,211.50 1
Risch, James E (R, Idaho Senate) $0.00 0
Roberts, Pat (R, Kansas Senate) $8,967.82 2
Rockefeller, Jay (D, West Virginia Senate) $610.00 1
Rodriguez, Ciro D (D, Texas District 23 ) $3,570.89 1
Roe, Phil (R, Tennessee District 1 ) $15,917.74 1
Rogers, Hal (R, Kentucky District 5 ) $0.00 0
Rogers, Mike (R, Michigan District 8 ) $10,608.60 1
Rogers, Mike D (R, Alabama District 3 ) $0.00 0
Rohrabacher, Dana (R, California District 46 ) $0.00 0
Rooney, Tom (R, Florida District 16 ) $14,947.74 1
Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana (R, Florida District 18 ) $36,314.16 6
Roskam, Peter (R, Illinois District 6 ) $0.00 0
Ross, Mike (D, Arkansas District 4 ) $20,185.79 2
Rothman, Steven R (D, New Jersey District 9 ) $7,821.15 2
Roybal-Allard, Lucille (D, California District 34 ) $0.00 0
Royce, Ed (R, California District 40 ) $8,739.47 2
Ruppersberger, Dutch (D, Maryland District 2 ) $16,374.78 1
Rush, Bobby L (D, Illinois District 1 ) $0.00 0
Ryan, Paul (R, Wisconsin District 1 ) $14,724.54 1
Ryan, Tim (D, Ohio District 17 ) $13,016.40 3
Salazar, John (D, Colorado District 3 ) $14,119.78 1
Sanchez, Linda (D, California District 39 ) $5,809.05 1
Sanchez, Loretta (D, California District 47 ) $21,004.85 6
Sanders, Bernie (I, Vermont Senate) $0.00 0
Sarbanes, John (D, Maryland District 3 ) $0.00 0
Scalise, Steve (R, Louisiana District 1 ) $9,155.87 1
Schakowsky, Jan (D, Illinois District 9 ) $16,951.76 5
Schauer, Mark (D, Michigan District 7 ) $0.00 0
Schiff, Adam (D, California District 29 ) $5,573.93 2
Schmidt, Jean (R, Ohio District 2 ) $20,278.90 1
Schock, Aaron (R, Illinois District 18 ) $15,301.43 2
Schrader, Kurt (D, Oregon District 5 )
Schultz, Debbie Wasserman (D, Florida District 20 ) $10,881.27 7
Schumer, Charles E (D, New York Senate) $18,035.36 4
Schwartz, Allyson (D, Pennsylvania District 13 ) $15,230.08 2
Scott, David (D, Georgia District 13 ) $20,273.45 2
Scott, Robert C (D, Virginia District 3 ) $0.00 0
Sensenbrenner, F James Jr (R, Wisconsin District 5 ) $0.00 0
Serrano, Jose E (D, New York District 16 ) $0.00 0
Sessions, Jeff (R, Alabama Senate) $0.00 0
Sessions, Pete (R, Texas District 32 ) $0.00 0
Sestak, Joseph A Jr (D, Pennsylvania District 7 ) $0.00 0
Shadegg, John (R, Arizona District 3 ) $0.00 0
Shaheen, Jeanne (D, New Hampshire Senate) $0.00 0
Shea-Porter, Carol (D, New Hampshire District 1 ) $0.00 0
Shelby, Richard C (R, Alabama Senate) $456.59 1
Sherman, Brad (D, California District 27 ) $0.00 0
Shimkus, John M (R, Illinois District 19 ) $13,094.61 2
Shuler, Heath (D, North Carolina District 11 ) $8,472.80 2
Shuster, Bill (R, Pennsylvania District 9 ) $0.00 0
Simpson, Mike (R, Idaho District 2 ) $3,650.85 1
Sires, Albio (D, New Jersey District 13 ) $23,585.07 3
Skelton, Ike (D, Missouri District 4 ) $0.00 0
Slaughter, Louise M (D, New York District 28 ) $0.00 0
Smith, Adam (D, Washington District 9 ) $0.00 0
Smith, Adrian (R, Nebraska District 3 ) $12,842.10 1
Smith, Chris (R, New Jersey District 4 ) $0.00 0
Smith, Lamar (R, Texas District 21 ) $0.00 0
Snowe, Olympia J (R, Maine Senate) $2,588.40 1
Snyder, Vic (D, Arkansas District 2 ) $2,588.40 1
Souder, Mark E (R, Indiana District 3 ) $21,469.70 1
Space, Zachary T (D, Ohio District 18 ) $0.00 0
Specter, Arlen (D, Pennsylvania Senate) $0.00 0
Speier, Jackie (D, California District 12 ) $0.00 0
Spratt, John M Jr (D, South Carolina District 5 ) $0.00 0
Stabenow, Debbie (D, Michigan Senate) $1,865.00 1
Stark, Pete (D, California District 13 )
Stearns, Cliff (R, Florida District 6 ) $1,480.49 2
Stupak, Bart (D, Michigan District 1 ) $4,352.28 1
Sullivan, John (R, Oklahoma District 1 ) $5,422.42 1
Sutton, Betty Sue (D, Ohio District 13 )
Tanner, John (D, Tennessee District 8 ) $25,390.71 2
Taylor, Gene (D, Mississippi District 4 ) $0.00 0
Teague, Harry (D, New Mexico District 2 )
Terry, Lee (R, Nebraska District 2 ) $5,744.00 1
Tester, Jon (D, Montana Senate) $0.00 0
Thompson, Bennie G (D, Mississippi District 2 ) $7,922.99 1
Thompson, Glenn (R, Pennsylvania District 5 ) $16,629.92 1
Thompson, Mike (D, California District 1 ) $0.00 0
Thornberry, Mac (R, Texas District 13 ) $0.00 0
Thune, John (R, South Dakota Senate) $0.00 0
Tiahrt, Todd (R, Kansas District 4 ) $0.00 0
Tiberi, Patrick J (R, Ohio District 12 ) $3,602.60 1
Tierney, John F (D, Massachusetts District 6 ) $0.00 0
Titus, Dina (D, Nevada District 3 ) $15,899.04 1
Tonko, Paul (D, New York District 21 ) $0.00 $0.00
Towns, Edolphus (D, New York District 10 ) $0.00 0
Tsongas, Niki (D, Massachusetts District 5 )
Turner, Michael R (R, Ohio District 3 ) $5,215.42 1
Udall, Mark (D, Colorado Senate) $0.00 0
Udall, Tom (D, New Mexico Senate) $0.00 0
Upton, Fred (R, Michigan District 6 ) $3,476.20 1
Van Hollen, Chris (D, Maryland District 8 ) $10,740.66 1
Velazquez, Nydia M (D, New York District 12 ) $0.00 0
Visclosky, Pete (D, Indiana District 1 ) $0.00 0
Vitter, David (R, Louisiana Senate) $5,669.82 1
Voinovich, George V (R, Ohio Senate) $2,588.40 1
Walden, Greg (R, Oregon District 2 ) $3,287.00 1
Walz, Timothy J (D, Minnesota District 1 )
Wamp, Zach (R, Tennessee District 3 ) $3,650.85 1
Warner, Mark (D, Virginia Senate)
Waters, Maxine (D, California District 35 )
Watson, Diane E (D, California District 33 )
Watt, Melvin L (D, North Carolina District 12 ) $0.00 0
Waxman, Henry A (D, California District 30 ) $33,467.72 4
Webb, James (D, Virginia Senate) $0.00 0
Weiner, Anthony D (D, New York District 9 ) $26,345.79 7
Welch, Peter (D, Vermont District 1 ) $0.00 0
Westmoreland, Lynn A (R, Georgia District 3 ) $22,706.30 1
Wexler, Robert (D, Florida District 19 ) $46,171.94 5
Whitehouse, Sheldon (D, Rhode Island Senate) $0.00 0
Whitfield, Ed (R, Kentucky District 1 ) $0.00 0
Wicker, Roger (R, Mississippi Senate) $0.00 0
Wilson, Charlie (D, Ohio District 6 ) $9,402.52 1
Wilson, Joe (R, South Carolina District 2 ) $29,964.04 3
Wittman, Rob (R, Virginia District 1 ) $6,835.04 1
Wolf, Frank R (R, Virginia District 10 ) $0.00 0
Woolsey, Lynn (D, California District 6 ) $12,515.14 2
Wu, David (D, Oregon District 1 ) $0.00 0
Wyden, Ron (D, Oregon Senate) $11,207.46 7
Yarmuth, John A (D, Kentucky District 3 ) $17,660.60 1
Young, C W Bill (R, Florida District 10 )
Young, Don (R, Alaska District 1 ) $0.00 0
$4,079,240.58
Iceland Rejects Icesave Bill in Referendum, Early Results Show
By Omar R. Valdimarsson | Bloomberg | March 6, 2010
Icelanders overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would saddle each citizen with $16,400 of debt in protest at U.K. and Dutch demands that they cover losses triggered by the failure of a private bank, first results show.
Ninety-three percent voted against the so-called Icesave bill, according to preliminary results on national broadcaster RUV. Final results may be published tomorrow morning.
The bill would have obliged the island to take on $5.3 billion, or 45 percent of last year’s economic output, in loans from the U.K. and the Netherlands to compensate the two countries for depositor losses stemming from the collapse of Landsbanki Islands hf more than a year ago.
“Ordinary people, farmers and fishermen, taxpayers, doctors, nurses, teachers, are being asked to shoulder through their taxes a burden that was created by irresponsible greedy bankers,” said President Olafur R. Grimsson, whose rejection of the bill resulted in the plebiscite, in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.
Failure to reach an agreement on the bill has left Iceland’s International Monetary Fund-led loan in limbo and prompted Fitch Ratings to cut its credit grade to junk. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s have signaled they may follow suit if no settlement is reached.
‘Obsolete’
Political leaders have already moved on and are trying to negotiate a new deal with the U.K. and the Dutch, making the bill in today’s vote “obsolete,” Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said on March 4.
“This referendum is very peculiar and without any parallel in Iceland’s history,” said Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, a professor of political science at the University of Iceland, in an interview.
The Icesave deal passed through parliament with a 33 to 30 vote majority. Grimsson blocked it after receiving a petition from a quarter of the population urging him to do so. The government has said it’s determined any new deal must have broader political backing to avoid meeting a similar fate.
Even so, signs of disunity across the political divide have emerged, prompting concerns that the government may be forging ahead without the backing of opposition parties.
“It’s extremely important that we try in full to complete the negotiations in harmony with the opposition,” Sigurdardottir said. “If that’s not possible, we will have to try to resolve this by ourselves.”
Outrage
Icelanders used the referendum to express their outrage at being asked to take on the obligations of bankers who allowed the island’s financial system to create a debt burden more than 10 times the size of the economy.
The nation’s three biggest banks, which were placed under state control in October 2008, had enjoyed a decade of market freedoms following the government’s privatizations through the end of the 1990s and the beginning of this decade.
Protesters have gathered every week, with regular numbers swelling to about 2,000, according to police estimates. The last time the island saw demonstrations on a similar scale was before the government of former Prime Minister Geir Haarde was toppled.
Icelanders have thrown red paint over house facades and cars of key employees at the failed banks, Kaupthing Bank hf, Landsbanki and Glitnir Bank hf, to vent their anger. The government has appointed a special commission to investigate financial malpractice and has identified more than 20 cases that will result in prosecution.
Economic Impact
The island’s economy shrank an annual 9.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, the statistics office said yesterday, and contracted 6.5 percent in 2009 as a whole.
Household debt with major credit institutions has doubled in the past five years and reached about 1.8 trillion kronur ($14 billion) in 2009, compared with the island’s $12 billion gross domestic product, according to the central bank.
Icelanders, the world’s fifth-richest per capita as recently as 2007, ended 2009 18 percent poorer and will see their disposable incomes decline a further 10 percent this year, the central bank estimates.
Grimsson, who has described his decision to put the depositor bill to a referendum as the “pinnacle of democracy,” says he’s not concerned about the economic fallout of his decision.
“The referendum has drawn back the curtain and people see on the stage the matter in a new perspective,” he said in an interview. “That has strengthened our position and our cause.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Omar Valdimarsson in London at valdimarsson@bloomberg.net
The Irony of Iowa’s Ethanol Exemption
Even Iowans Don’t Want to Put It in Their Tanks
By Robert Bryce | March 5, 2010
Oh the irony. This morning, the Des Moines Register is reporting on the death of a piece of legislation known as SF 2359. The bill would have required that all gasoline sold in Iowa contain at least 10% ethanol. But Iowa legislators couldn’t garner enough political support for the bill.
You read it right. Iowa, the biggest ethanol-producing state in the US, doesn’t have a requirement that forces consumers to buy ethanol-blended gasoline. The result: only about 73% of the gasoline sold in the state contains ethanol. And according to a story written by Dan Piller, a reporter at the Des Moines Register, the Iowa legislature couldn’t pass SF 2359 because it was “opposed by a coalition that included fuel retailers and marketers and truckers.”
Iowa has about 3.3 billion gallons of ethanol production capacity, that’s more than twice the capacity of the next-biggest producer, Nebraska. Iowa’s ethanol industry and farm lobby plays an outsized role in US politics. Every four years, presidential candidates must make the haj to Iowa and bow down before the ethanol industry while proclaiming their loving support for corn ethanol. The 2008 election provided hard proof of the importance of the Iowa ethanol industry. Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain – avid critics of ethanol before they began their campaigns for the White House – became ethanol evangelists when they started visiting Iowa.
For decades, US taxpayers and consumers have been paying for the subsidies and mandates that are designed solely for the benefit of the corn ethanol scammers, but Iowans have not shared equally in the pain. About 28 states and the District of Columbia have mandates on ethanol-blended gasoline. And earlier this year, top Iowa legislators believed they would be able to add Iowa’s name to that list. Jack Kibbie, a Democrat from Emmetsburg, who serves as the president of the Iowa Senate had a wonderful quote in Wallaces Farmer:
We hear from critics here in Iowa that a mandatory blend of E10 won’t work, that it will mess up engines on motorboats and lawnmowers…Baloney. With all the lakes and boats they have in Minnesota, many more than in Iowa, they’re doing just fine with their E10 mandate. Remember, this bill we want to pass, Senate File 2359, calls for a 10% blend of ethanol in gasoline for highway use for motor vehicles. It has provisions to provide non-ethanol gasoline for antique vehicles, motorboats, lawnmowers and other small engines.
But earlier this week, Kibbie was forced to admit that his bill was dead. And his explanation was revealing: “People don’t like mandates,” he said, “and of course the petroleum marketers didn’t like it.” So Kibbie and his fellow Democrats decided not to subject the bill to a full debate before the Iowa legislature.
At the very same time that the ethanol lobby is pushing the Obama administration to break the “blend wall,” which prohibits gasoline retailers from selling fuel containing more than 10% ethanol, the Iowa legislature can’t even pass a measure that would require Iowans to buy gasoline containing 10% ethanol. Indeed, the ethanol industry wants federal regulators to allow fuel retailers to sell gasoline that has been adulterated with up to 15% ethanol. And they need that regulatory relief because fat federal subsidies led to too much investment in ethanol production capacity. According to Ethanol Producer Magazine, 19 ethanol plants with a capacity of 884 million gallons per year are now sitting idle. And another 7 plants with 484 million gallons of production capacity are under construction. Meanwhile about 192 plants are operating with total capacity of 12.7 billion gallons per year.
The punchline here is obvious: Iowa, a state that has about 25% of all the ethanol production capacity in the US, doesn’t require its citizens to buy ethanol-blended gasoline. And the Iowa legislature can’t pass a bill to change that because, as Kibbie said, “people don’t like mandates.”
Oh the irony.
Robert Bryce’s fourth book, Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, will be published in April.
Next Generation Biofuels, from the makers of the A-bomb
Mr. DiFi Cashes in on Crisis
By WILL PARRISH and DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM | March 1, 2010
This past July, following the California State Legislature’s decision to strip $813 million from the University of California’s Fiscal Year 2009-10 budget, the UC’s 26-member Board of Regents voted to declare “a state of financial emergency.” Such a “state of emergency,” the university’s official by-laws state, should accompany an “imminent and substantial deficiency in available university financial resources.”
The Regents also voted to grant special “emergency powers” to UC President Mark G. Yudof. Yudof promptly marshaled his new and vaguely defined authority to lay off hundreds of workers, impose pay cuts and furloughs on remaining university staff, and propose a 32 percent increase in student fees which the Regents approved in November.
At the same meeting, Regents Chairman Russell Gould announced the formation of a new UC Commission on the Future. Its de facto function has been to further the privatization of the university. Notably, Gould is one of California’s most prominent financiers, a man who served as vice chairman of Wachovia Bank during its growth as one of the leading subprime mortgage lenders in the United States. He and Yudof serve as the commission’s co-chairmen. In Gould’s words, the commission’s task is “nothing short of re-imagining” the University of California.
The State of California’s political elites and business leaders routinely use the language of crisis now whenever discussing the University of California. In the past few decades, state funding of the university has suffered steady erosion. The UC now receives more funding than ever from private corporations and the federal government (the latter being in most instances pretty much the same as the former). Its various revenue streams range from student fees to several billion dollars in medical hospital revenue to private grants and donations, to its own hedge fund-like investments portfolio, to atomic bomb dollars from the Department of Energy.
Thus, despite the state budget cuts, the UC’s overall revenue reached an all-time high of $19.42 billion in the 2009-10 academic year, and the Regents’ claim that the UC faces an “imminent and substantial” funding deficit is inaccurate, to say the least. According to both the university’s own financial documents and Moody’s bond rating agency, the university had access to over $8.3 billion in unrestricted investment funds it was holding in reserve at the time.
The university has undergone a neo-liberal-style “structural adjustment” at the behest of the UC Regents, and this transformation has been accelerated during Yudof’s tenure as president. Under the leadership of California’s economic elite, the UC has become the leading prototype for a “disaster capitalist university.”
Since the mid-1990s, administrative salaries have absorbed a dramatically increasing share of the university’s overall budget. According to a study by UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Physics Charles Schwartz, the number of UC administrative positions increased by an almost unbelievable 118 percent from 1996 to 2006, as compared with a 34 percent increase in faculty positions and 33 percent increase in students over the same period. As a result, there are currently 3,600 UC employees who make more than $200,000 a year, many of them through administrative positions.
An even more damning revelation was made public this past October when UC Santa Cruz Professor Bob Meister published his scathing analysis of the UC administration’s use of student tuition dollars as collateral for construction bond debts. In addition to his PhD in economics, Meister serves as Chairman of the Council of University Faculties – essentially, a faculty union with representatives on all 10 of the university’s campuses. He knows what he’s talking about. According to the Regents’ own data and policy documents, the primary use of student fee revenue since 2004 has been as collateral for bonds to fund campus construction projects. In this “modified credit swap,” students are forced to take out “subprime” student loans, often charging six percent interest, so the university can borrow money at a reduced rate to construct new facilities like – to take one example — the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley, which UC Regent Richard C. Blum’s own construction company, URS Corporation, was contracted by the university to build.
And those subprime student loans? They’re often owned by big banks like Wachovia and other financial outfits that many of the UC Regents and their business partners are shareholders or executives of. So the whole cycle begins and ends with massive public and student debts, both of which increase as the Regents partake in further undermining the tax base while looting the public sector, again ratcheting up the crisis rhetoric.
UC Los Angeles instructor Bob Samuels has observed that “Moody’s even slipped into its bond rating for the UC system the need for the [UC] to restrain labor costs, increase student fees, diversify revenue streams, feed the money-making sectors, and resist the further unionization of its employees,” Samuels concludes that, “like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank, the bond raters tie access to credit to the dismantling of the public sector and the adoption of neo-liberal ideology.”
To understand fully why the University of California’s internal finances are being subjected to “economic shock therapy,” much like a Third World debtor nation under the thumb of the IMF, it’s necessary to know a bit about the history and function of the university’s power structure. Although it is nominally a public institution, the UC is not owned and governed by the State of California. Rather, it is the UC Regents who call all the shots. The Board of Regents is a corporate entity formed in 1879 for the explicit purpose of thwarting a populist social movement of small farmers who demanded that the the university become more responsive to their needs.
“During a tumultuous decade in California history,” historian John Aubrey Douglass has written, “many saw the new University of California as serving the interests of the upper classes, focusing on classical ‘gentlemanly training’ and replicating the Yankee private institutions of the East. The detractors of the university demanded that, as an instrument of social and economic development, the university primarily serve the training and research needs of agriculture and industry, the stated ‘leading objective’ of the institution under statutory law.”
During the California constitutional convention of that year, a clique of mostly San Francisco-based financiers and industrialists managed to defeat the democratic demands of farmers and small business owners. The crowning achievement of this elitist coup was the establishment of the UC Board of Regents, a corporate entity that owns and operates the university. To maintain their power against all opposition the Regents gave themselves twelve-year tenures that are explicitly meant to insulate them from any political pressures. The UC thus became what Douglass calls “a fourth branch of state government.”
Since then, the leading sectors of the California economy have self-appointed individuals who represent their economic interests on the Board. The Regents mold UC policies in broad ways that benefit capital’s leading monopoly sectors. The current going price for an appointment – probably the most prestigious one at the governor’s disposal, it should be noted – seems to be $50,000, bare minimum. Give the Gov. this sum, and you too could be a Regent.
Until relatively recently this meant that Regents would promote policies designed to build cutting edge economic sectors in and around the UC campuses, but they’d make sure to throw some of the university’s gravy to less sexy and profitable sectors of the economy. So for much of the Board’s history they’ve acted as Karl Marx’s idea of government: an executive board of the bourgeoisie, working if not for the interest of every industry, at least most of its monopoly sectors, and taking care not to destroy too many of the smaller fry. In recent years, the Board of Regents has become dominated by financiers, however. As with the economy at large, these wizards of hedge funds, credit markets, venture capital, real estate speculation, and all the other games played with billion dollar pots of money, have begun to run the university itself as a $19 billion dollar speculative bubble with ample opportunities for enormous growth through “volatility.” These new alpha Regents specialize in leveraged buyouts and privatization of publicly traded companies, and they have long practiced this same basic business philosophy on the university.
The most prominent among this cadre has been Richard Blum. As we detailed in our last CounterPunch article, Blum’s five-decade career as a finance capitalist has been distinguished by the levels of skill and panache he has applied to the time-honored task of siphoning off public money into one’s own corporate coffers, as well as those of one’s financial and political allies. Blum, who is married to US Senator Dianne Feinstein, is one of the leading power-brokers in the Democratic Party within both California and the United States.
Notably, it was Blum who virtually hand-picked President Yudof for UC President, having chaired the selection committee that oversaw Yudof’s appointment. At a March 2008 press conference heralding the Yudof hiring, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Blum seemed “visibly ecstatic.” In April, the Chronicle quoted Blum again, saying of Yudof, “we disagree on almost nothing. If I were giving Mark a grade, I would give him an A-plus.”
Another prime example of the university’s “investors’ club” (the title of an upcoming series by investigative reporter Peter Byrne) is Gerald Parsky, a San Diego venture capitalist who reportedly commutes daily by jet to Los Angeles. As a Republican Party powerhouse, Parsky was so influential during his 1996-2008 tenure on the Regents that the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) dubbed a particularly influential faction of the Board “The Parsky Clique.” In addition to being president of Los Angeles-based Aurora Capital, recent additions to Parsky’s resume include acting as senior economic advisor to John McCain presidential campaign and as chairman of the Schwarzenegger administration’s Commission on the 21st Century Economy. Just as Parsky helped steer the UC toward ever-greater privatization throughout his tenure as a Regent, his commission issued a series of recommendations on reforming the state’s tax and revenue system in a manner more favorable to big business, even prompting some observers to label the Parsky Commission’s proposals “California’s Shock Doctrine.”
Current Regents Chairman Russell Gould is another financier and California Republican Party heavy. In addition to his role at Wachovia Bank, he served as California Director of Finance in the Pete Wilson administration in the 1990s. After that, he served a stint as assets managers of the $5.5 billion J. Paul Getty Trust Fund, a charitable organization founded with money from the Getty oil fortune. The Gettys are neighbors of one Richard Blum and Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco’s uber-bourgeoise Pacific Heights neighborhood, where Mr. and Mrs. DiFi purchased a $16.5 million palatial estate in 2005.
(As an aside, the Getty Trust was run in those years by one Barry Munitz, former chancellor of the California State University System. From 1984 to 1991, Munitz was vice president of Maxxam Corporation under Charles Hurwitz, as the company clear-cut the lands and livelihoods of California North Coast residents. Munitz has since been a leading force behind shaping the California Business Roundtable’s public education policy agenda, which strongly favors neo-liberal privatization.)
Another Regent, Paul Wachter, acts as Gov. Schwarzengger’s personal financial adviser. Regent George Marcus is a lead organizer of The Real Estate Roundtable, the main political voice of real estate capital in the United States. Regent Judith Hopkinson, whose tenure recently ended, is a retired executive of Ameriquest Capital Corporation, a big mortgage company that is partly responsible for precipitating the current economic crisis: Ameriquest lent billions in sub-prime loans to families across the US knowing full well they would have trouble making payments down the line as rates increased. And the list goes on.
One of the primary enterprises Richard Blum has presided over in recent years is the real estate corporation CB Richard Ellis. With projects in nearly 100 countries, CBRE is the largest brokerage firm on the planet. In a notable example of how Blum’s own particular business interests have become increasingly enmeshed with those of the university, during the course of his tenure as a Regent, CBRE has contracted with at least eight of the UC’s 10 campuses over the past decade. Most often, the company has consulted with these campuses to produce glossy reports highlighting the beneficial economic impacts on the immediate regions that host them, as well as that of California in general. The UC’s San Francisco, Davis, Berkeley, San Diego, and Riverside campuses have all paid CBRE to produce precisely these kinds of economic development treatises.
Each of these CBRE reports marshals a wide range of statistical data to promote a particular vision of the UC’s role in California’s larger economy and society. While paying occasional lip service to the UC’s contributions to “the richness of California culture,” the reports overwhelmingly emphasize the UC’s role in fostering high-tech business enterprise, premised on a decidedly Reagan-esque view of the inherent superiority of top-down economic spending. The core purpose of UC San Diego, according to one CBRE report, is to fuel “the expansion of the skilled labor pool for high-tech businesses and biotech businesses in San Diego.” UC Irvine is “an economic engine powering prosperity” owing to its various big business spin-offs and the high-tech start-up companies founded by its faculty.
The implicit conclusion is that the university’s complete subordination to capital is the primary reason for its existence, and that anything the UC could do for biotech, aerospace, real estate, and finance capital, it should do. In this way, the shift to privatization of the university’s finances, including student fees that are redirected to pay for campus construction projects, goes hand-in-hand with the efforts of state and business elites to render the university a wholesale servant of California’s neo-liberal economic machinery. Under this model, State funding is seen as akin to “local matching funds,” sweetening the overall pot for the real investors, the main purpose being not to make the university affordable for students, but rather to expand the university’s physical footprint and build fancy new research centers that will create all manner of techno-gadgetry to inflate the next bubble.
The UC Regents, in other words, have come to conceive of UC campuses almost entirely as incubators for a constellation of mini-Silicon Valleys: alliances of venture capitalists, real estate speculators, and high-tech entrepreneurs writ large upon large and overlapping swaths of California. It stands to reason that the UC’s leadership would be enamored of the region of the United States that is home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country, but which has also seen one of the sharpest declines in real wages among its working class. Silicon Valley also leads the way with the most temporary workers per capita, the highest level of economic inequity between genders, and the greatest concentration of toxic Superfund sites in the United States. Neo-liberalism in a nutshell.
Even so, the Regents and UC’s executives have long spoken in excited tones about spreading the model. The UC’s newest campus, UC Merced, was sold entirely on the premise that it would produce a critical mass of biotechnologists, nanotechnologists, engineers, and other wizards of the ruling high-tech religion that mythically creates economic booms that lift all boats. Currently, though, the Central Valley is experiencing some of the greatest levels of unemployment and highest home foreclosure rates in the country. UC Santa Cruz, traditionally the arts and humanities campus of the UC system, was transformed during this era into what some administrators happily called “Silicon Beach.” Much like with the global neo-liberal economy it has done so much to advance, the great majority who don’t already possess ample resources are left under this model to fend for themselves. […]
If the UC is prioritizing various toxic combinations of science and industry at the expense of most students, then what are those projects? Examples abound. In June 2006, the UC announced an agreement with the world’s second largest oil company, British Petroleum, whereby it will receive half a billion dollars per year over 10 years, principally for research into genetically modified elephant grass and other transgenic plants that are candidates to produce alcohol for non-fossil car fuel. The project is housed as a facility on campus called the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI). In keeping with the “public-private partnership” funding model that currently prevails, the State of California put up “matching funds” in the form of $73 million in construction bonds to help smooth the way for the EBI’s landing on the Berkeley campus.
This is one of UC Berkeley’s largest current applied research programs, and it naturally comes straight from the “crisis” playbook. The project is justified under the pretense of helping to solve two major crises – global climate change and its twin bogeyman, oil depletion. In reality, biofuel monoculture has become perhaps the leading cause of dispossession of small farmers in the Global South, as well as the destruction of important ecosystems such as the Amazon Basin rain forest.
Berkeley’s biofuels institute will only further enable multi-national corporations to penetrate, reorganize, poison and despoil the lands, livelihoods, and psyches of Amazon Basin and other cultures. The net impact of the EBI on the environment – that is, the actually existing ecosystems of South America, Indonesia, et al. – will be decidedly negative. On the day of the contract signing, then-UC President Robert Dynes heralded it as “a great day for Mother Earth.”
Both Dynes and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Director Stephen Chu, now duly installed as the Obama administration’s secretary of energy, referred to this project as a “new manhattan project.” It was a fitting designation, although the original Manhattan Project never quite ended, and it has only gained ground under a president who sold the world on “hope” and “change.” The UC continues to co-manage the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons compounds, which have designed every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal dating from the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as part of for-profit partnerships with the world’s largest construction and engineering firm, Bechtel Corporation. The UC-Bechtel contracts are worth as much as $80 billion in revenue over the course of their 20 year lifespans, a hefty chunk of change when you’re concerned with your bond ratings.
On February 1, the Obama administration unveiled a budget in which both of the UC’s weapons labs would receive a massive funding “surge.” The proposed funding increase of 23 percent at Los Alamos would be the facility’s largest since 1944. Much of that funding is for a new factory to produce plutonium bomb cores, the explosive triggers of modern thermo-nuclear warheads, for the expressed purpose of outfitting the first new nukes to be developed since the end of the Cold War. The investments are sold as the need to “maintain the US nuclear deterrent” in a time of rapidly escalating threats, allegedly, from Iran, North Korea, and potentially even nuclear-armed terrorists.
Again, crisis begets opportunity if you’re properly positioned in the most privileged circles, so it’s fitting that one of the two junior partners in the UC-Bechtel management team should be Richard Blum’s now-former company, URS Corporation. At the time Blum became a Regent, URS already had a $125 million contract to perform construction and engineering at Los Alamos. It was a natural extension of his general business philosophy that Blum would have been eying wholesale ownership of the weapons lab at the time. That in mind, perhaps a little Q & A is in order. Which entities now run the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore weapons labs? The University of California, Bechtel, and URS Corporation, along with a couple of other junior partners. Which UC Regent had a lucrative financial partnership with the Bechtel family, via a $3.5 billion medical technology supplies company named Kinetic Concepts, that precedes the UC-Bechtel weapons lab partnership by eight years? Richard Blum. Who was URS Corporation’s primary financier and vice president for three decades? Richard Blum. Which UC Regent was among a select group of policy wonks who participated in a nuclear weapons policy conference in Oslo, Norway, in 2007, organized largely by a long-time Bechtel executive, George Shultz, who has been instrumental to securing the weapons labs’ recent funding increases? We won’t even bother answering that last question – this exercise has become entirely rhetorical. – Full article
Will Parrish is a writer and organizer living in Laytonville, CA.
Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist who splits his time between New Orleans, Albuquerque, and Navarro, CA.
Readers can contact Will Parrish at wparrish(a)riseup.net and Darwin Bond-Graham at darwin(a)riseup.net. They originally prepared this series for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, one of the very few real newspapers in America and probably soon the last one left standing.
License Plate Software Stirs Privacy Concerns
By KEN BELSON | The New York Times | February 26, 2010
THE notion of roving cameras snapping pictures of license plates conjures up television shows like Fox’s counterterrorism series, “24.”
It’s not just fantasy, though. Americans are already watched by a variety of security agencies using electronic surveillance technology, and in this post-9/11 world, there seems to be no turning back.
Privacy advocates, though, are not altogether comfortable with license plate numbers being electronically recorded by commercial operations.
While their views on the gathering this data may vary, privacy groups uniformly agree that the real issue is what happens to the photos after they are taken: how long they are stored and by whom; how secure the data is and whether it might be shared with third parties. Are the photographed license plate numbers matched against other lists, like credit scores or addresses?
“It’s a huge Pandora’s box,” Jack Gillis, a spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America, said. “There are possibilities for tremendous violations if it is used to find out where people are at a given time. Until the access to this technology can be controlled, it has scary potential.”
MVTRAC, whose database of delinquent borrowers is offered on a subscription basis to auto repossession outfits, said that it stores plate numbers recorded by users for years — and uses a high level of encryption to protect the data.
Still, with automatic license plate recognition technology now in private hands, its potential uses are magnified. As with other data streams, like records of cellphone calls or toll transponder payments, the accumulated data can be subpoenaed as evidence in court. MVTRAC and others say that repo men see personal information only when they find a wanted car, the same as they would in the faxes and e-mails they receive from auto lenders.
But invariably, technology finds other applications, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties advocacy group. You can imagine a scenario, he said, where someone spots a car with an attractive driver, types the license plate number into a computer program and finds the owner’s name. Many companies say their data is encrypted, he said, but “you have to ask, ‘who has the key?’ ”
DiFi and Blum: a Marriage Marinated in Money
Family Business
By WILL PARRISH and DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM | February 26, 2010
On April 17, 2009, with the edifice of the global economy rotting under an architecture of monumental greed, war deficits, and official hubris, the University of California, Berkeley conducted a groundbreaking ceremony for its Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies. Before a throng of students, faculty, staff, and PR specialists affiliated with the Center’s new multi-UC campus “Global Poverty & Practice” program, the Blum Center’s namesake was joined on stage by one of the many political heavyweights he counts among his business partners, Al Gore. The former Vice President praised Blum as a long-time friend and cited the new institute as a key to solving the interlocking problems of global poverty and global climate change, two of the many vexing boogeymen threatening to destabilize the profit-making order.
To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, who published a book on the general subject in 1923, some of the greatest sociopaths in this country’s history have affixed their names to university buildings in an effort to burnish their reputations.
Richard Blum is a San Francisco-based finance capitalist presiding over a business empire that is, to say the least, expansive. Hedge funds? Blum owns one outright and wields a significant share of various others. Real estate? His primary investment vehicle, the $7.8 billion Blum Capital Partners, owns the largest real estate brokerage firm on the planet, CB Richard Ellis, of which Blum is chairman of the board. Construction? Until public scandal prompted him to sell off his holdings, Blum was a majority partner in a construction and engineering company that did billions in business with the US military, among other government clients. Education? Try being the resident Alpha Regent of the largest public university system in the world, the University of California, while also being a primary owner of the world’s second-largest for-profit education firm, Career Education Corporation.
Large land-holding firms? Digital media company of which Al Gore serves as frontman? Health industry corporation fighting to undermine the expansion of public health care? Border-town maquiladora that build weapons components for the Department of Defense? Check, check, check, and check.
Richard Blum (center) with Al Gore – Photo credit UCB
The greatest investment of Blum’s career was undoubtedly his marriage, roughly 30 years ago, to the politically Joe Lieberman-esque US Senate Democrat, Dianne Feinstein. At the time of this meshing of Blum’s financial interests with Feinstein’s formidable political ambitions, Feinstein was Mayor of San Francisco and Blum — already one of her main financial backers — had much of his fortune staked to various development projects in the City.
Blum’s preferred means of personal enrichment rely on strong nation-state interventions in markets and societies to promote unfettered corporate dominance of national economies and distant lands. It should come as no surprise, then, that he and “DiFi” are among the leading proponents of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank/US Treasury nexus’ notion of how economies ought best be developed. This form of economic “improvement” (deriving from the Anglo-French “emprouwer,” meaning “to clear for profit”) involves burying Third World economies under mountains of debt backed by usurious interest rates, facilitating the greatest level of investment possible by rapacious multi-national corporate entities, privatizing government functions, and gutting social services. Ironically, this agenda of neoliberal “structural adjustment” has decimated and impoverished communities across the planet, causing suffering among the hundreds of millions of people Blum’s heart now bleeds for: poor folks.
The economic and political policies promoted by Richard C. Blum and associates, including Senator Feinstein and other leaders of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, have locked nations and peoples across the planet into a system of de facto colonial bondage whereby their lands and destines are controlled by distant, debt-holding banks and hedge funds – among them, Blum Capital Partners, LLC, and Newbridge Capital, LLC, of which Blum was chairman of the Asia investment division for five years. The result has been what author and UC Irvine sociologist Mike Davis calls a “planet of slums,” where .23 percent of the world population privately owns more than 50 percent of the land, and 85 percent of urban dwellers in the Third World are consigned to living on illegal squats in hellish shanty towns under conditions of grinding poverty.
Just ask the people of Haiti, whose capital city now greatly resembles a war zone reduced to rubble ala Fallujah, Iraq, or Kabul, Afghanistan, not by virtue of a natural disaster per se, but because the IMF-WTO-US Treasury specialists in immiseration have forced them off their land into desperately sub-standard slum housing, often perched tenuously on the side of deforested hills and ravines. This “urban geography of mass vulnerability,” as the academic field of disaster sociology refers to it, was created by the destruction of the country’s rural agrarian economy that provided for subsistence, in an economic transformation imposed by international creditors with the constant backing of the US military.
Yet, at UC Berkeley, we have Dick Blum hoisting up “sustainable solutions to the toughest poverty challenges” as his new line of work.
Charles Hurwitz
Blum’s name is a familiar one to those acquainted with the details of the corporate plundering of California north coast forests and communities throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. The year was 1995, and Texas corporate raider Charles Hurwitz — whose company, Maxxam, had laid waste to as much ancient forestland as possible, as quickly as possible, for nearly a decade — was looking to cash out of his ownership of the Headwaters forest in central Humboldt County. Headwaters was the flashpoint of the largest direct action protests in the history of the earth defense movement, as well as lawsuits and legislative initiatives aimed at preserving what little was left of old-growth redwood ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest. It so happened Hurwitz was an investment partner of Blum from way back. Blum also happened to be a major donor, fundraiser, and political booster of US President Bill Clinton.
Clinton and the State of California dutifully discharged their duties as proxies of the super-wealthy in general – and, in this case, Blum in particular — by appointing the inviolable “DiFi” to chair a legislative team to negotiate the purchase of Headwaters from Hurwitz. Feinstein and Hurwitz agreed on a final deal in 1996, hailed by Feinstein’s web site as one of her 10 greatest career accomplishments. Hurwitz gave up very little of real economic value — Maxxam had clear-cut most of the forest in question — in exchange for a $380 million taxpayer-funded payout, or more than four times the market value of the trees at the time. Much of the money went directly into Hurwitz’s personal bank accounts. That’s in spite of the fact that all the government really needed to do to protect the acreage in question was enforce the Endangered Species Act. Regardless of the fact that Headwaters became officially “protected,” the vast majority of California’s remaining old growth and other mature stands of redwood were pillaged by the end of the decade. Hurwitz’s empire cashed out, like other timber conglomerates, by liquidating the forests and the livelihoods of the North Coast.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair later revealed that Blum and another Hurwitz pal, the Houston-based Continental Airlines chairman David Bonderman, had personally met with Clinton at the White House in a “coffee klatsch” fundraiser on December 15, 1995, likely to discuss the details of the Headwaters buy-out, which occurred six months later. Bonderman and Blum were both directors of the Wilderness Society, the only national environmental organization that praised the buy-out.
For all the fanfare that emerged in the Clinton era about how corporate globalization had rendered the nation-state a bit player in the larger drama of the new, “free trade”-dominated corporate economic order, the nation-state’s role in propping up the global capitalist system has never been more central. That role is being laid bare as never before with each multi-billion dollar subsidy the federal government passes onto the financial industry — an estimated $5 trillion in total taxpayer money since the bail-out program commenced in fall 2008 (an exact figure is hard to determine). What is known in academic-speak as “neo-liberalism” represents little more than the sophisticated apex of a governing system refined and perfected over the course of several decades (nay, centuries), which is principally designed to socialize the risks of rapacious capitalism while privatizing public goods to create unprecedented levels of profit for the super-wealthy.
Blum is not only a representative of this system, but one of its most skillful promoters and practitioners. Throughout his career, and particularly in recent years, he has siphoned off taxpayer money into the coffers of his various personal holdings with a calculated brazenness that would make the most swaggering Cosa Nostra blush. The Headwaters Forest scam was indicative of exactly how these people have done business for nigh on three decades. To pull only a handful of examples from the very recent past:
- In early-2007, investigative reporter Peter Byrne published a groundbreaking series in the North Bay Bohemian, the “Feinstein Files.” Byrne revealed that as chairperson of the Senate’s Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee from 2001 through 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of more than $1.5 billion for two defense contractors, URS Corporation and Perini Corporation, in which Blum owned a controlling interest. In the series’ smoking gun, long-time Blum business partner Michael R. Klein told Byrne he regularly took the highly unusual step of supplying Feinstein’s office with lists of Perini’s current and upcoming contractual interests in federal legislation, ostensibly so the senator would abstain from voting on these matters for ethical reasons (which she never did). “Earmarks, you know, set asides, you name it, there was a system in place which on a regular basis I got notified, I notified her office, and her office notified her,” said Klein, Perini’s vice chairman at the time. Blum later sold his holdings in URS to the tune of more than $100 million in personal profit.
- In January 2009, Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in federal funding to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) program designed to forestall home foreclosures by expediting loan workouts and expanding federal loan guarantees. On the surface, Feinstein’s legislation was a straightforward intervention on behalf of troubled homeowners nationwide. But less than two months prior, the FDIC had also awarded Blum’s real estate company, CB Richard Ellis, a multimillion dollar contract to sell homes the agency had inherited from failed banks. This move was also highly unusual, since Feinstein is not a member of the Senate committee that oversees the FDIC.
- This past November, the University of California Board of Regents imposed an “emergency” 32 percent fee increase on undergraduate students, effective in the 2009-10 academic year. The increase stems not only from severe state-mandated budget cuts, but also a series of decisions by the university’s board of regents – of which Richard Blum is the resident alpha member (although no longer chair of the board), having been appointed to that post by Gray Davis – that have effectively pledged student fee increases to the capital bond market, thereby creating a financial incentive for the Regents to continually raise fees, in a pyramid scheme that raises money for campus construction projects. It should come as no surprise that URS Corporation, the same company that made $1.5 billion on contracts awarded by Feinstein’s Senate military construction committee, has been the main contractor for the largest university capital projects in recent years: UCLA’s $150 million reconstruction of Santa Monica Hospital, UC Berkeley’s $48 million nanotechnology laboratory, and Berkeley’s $200 million Southeast Campus Integrated Project, which includes a seismic retrofit of Memorial Stadium and an expansion of the Haas School of Business — home of the Blum Center for Developing Economies. More on this in next week’s AVA.
Blum-Feinstein, Inc. has accomplished these immense transfers of public wealth absent of almost any serious media scrutiny. But in recent years, the media deep freeze has slowly begun to thaw, beginning with a pair of front-page stories in the San Francisco Chronicle in May 2005. Chronicle science writer Keay Davidson’s fine reporting was spurred on by a public outing at a UC Regents meeting when students revealed Blum’s conflict of interest as a member of the committee overseeing the two nuclear weapons labs the UC runs on behalf of the US government. Blum’s URS Corporation had a $125 million, five-year construction and engineering services contract with the UC’s Los Alamos, NM nuclear weapons development compound at the time. Less than two years later, Peter Byrne’s series regarding Blum’s war profiteering appeared in the North Bay Bohemian.
This past semester, UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar of Geography Gray Brechin co-taught a course on investigative journalism. Brechin is best known as the author of a superb historical work on Northern California’s ruling elite, Imperial San Francisco. He has been an observer of Blum-DiFi, Inc. for years.
“I’m very impressed by the reluctance of most journalists to follow a story that has been screaming to be done for years while they have been covering their ears and eyes,” Brechin told us. “You guys and Peter [Byrne] are about the only ones who understand that behind the billowing smoke appears to be a roaring bonfire.”
Blum-Feinstein’s concentration of power is greatest in their home state, of course, and it stands to reason in any case that Blum’s CB Richard Ellis would be making a killing off the ongoing fire sale of State of California assets. In October, CBRE secured a contract from the California Department of General Services to broker over $2 billion in office buildings the state intends to privatize.
Blum’s fortunes aren’t entirely a function of Feinstein’s legislative exploits. Nor are Feinstein’s political powers entirely a result of her Daddy Warbucks. And the State of California’s economic plight stems not only from the avarice of a small handful of individuals, but from an economic system that is inherently self-destructive and crisis-prone. Blum and Feinstein, however, have worked hand-in-glove with other members of the state’s banking, real estate, agribusiness, and military-industrial interests to buffer regressive tax and spending policies, helping to devise the very austerity measures currently being hoisted upon the people of California across all public sectors, not just within the University of California.
Therein lies much of the reason Blum is now so quick to tout his anti-poverty bona fides. Blum, you see, has a public relations problem. It’s built into the way he does business. It’s built into the political economy he straddles as one of the US empire’s most connected and wealthy power elites.
Gray Brechin notes that Blum seems to have hired a public relations firm to bolster his personal brand. “Blum has gotten an extraordinary amount of fawning publicity in a very short time, including a front page feature in the Haas Business School magazine about what a whiz he is. I believe that this coincided with the black tie event at the Palace Hotel where Haas celebrated him as Global Citizen of the Year and I joined others from Cal to protest his actions as Alpha Regent.”
“Then there were the two treacly profiles of him in the San Francisco Chronicle recently. I can’t believe this is all coincidental.”
It isn’t. Nor is it coincidental that, as Peter Byrne revealed, longtime Blum business partner Michael Klein has founded a nonprofit foundation that makes grants to media organizations that watchdog the federal government. The organization started after Wikipedia instituted a policy blocking congressional staffers from editing Wiki entries pertaining to their bosses. Employees from Dianne Feinstein’s office had just been caught editing entries in the online encyclopedia that cast Blum and Feinstein in an unfavorable light. Thus does one of Blum’s closest business associates now control a significant portion of the budgets of several ostensibly independent organizations that monitor political
corruption.
Blum is also now strongly affiliated with a multi-campus academic program at the UC, centered on an institute at UC Berkeley that Blum founded with $15 million in seed money, designed to put band-aids on the symptoms of global poverty he and his wife have had an instrumental role in creating. Beyond this exercise in mystifying the causes of poverty in distant lands, the state’s economic elite — with Blum and Feinstein helping to lead the charge — have long been in the process of turning their philosophy of neoliberal privatization, fiscal austerity, and personal enrichment on the State of California itself. Richard C. Blum Center for Developing Economies, indeed.
Blum is a self-professed Buddhist and friend of the XVIth Dalai Lama. Many of his anti-poverty efforts are geared toward slum dwellers in Tibet and Nepal. “Would an actual Buddhist provide the bulk of the funding for a multi-million dollar institute, only to attach his own name to it?” Brechin mused.
The populist anger seething below the surface of the American body politic has not yet boiled over into any sort of coherent rebellion against the elites who have wrought the greatest economic catastrophe since the 1930s. There is little indication that it will any time soon. Blum’s own financial empire, however, is now quietly under assault by the hundreds of University of California students who have learned to loathe the man who has done more than any other to structurally adjust their university and price many of the state’s youth out of higher education. These cognizant students, supported by campus workers paid poverty wages by university leaders like Blum, are now organizing building take-overs and some of the largest student protests on those campuses of the past four decades.
In the next part of this series, we will focus on Blum’s role in gutting the University of California, where the tuition increases extracted in the last four years from Mendocino County residents alone would be large enough to close roughly half the county’s $7 million budget gap.
Readers can contact Will Parrish at wparrish(a)riseup.net and Darwin
Bond-Graham at darwin(a)riseup.net. They originally prepared this series for the Anderson Valley Advertiser (http://theava.com/), one of the very few real newspapers in America and probably soon the last one left standing.
Al Gore Is Lying Low — for Good Reason
By Rex McBride | February 24, 2010
Maybe Al Gore’s been advised by legal counsel to lie low. He may be the leader of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) movement, but he’s not defending it in public, not even when it’s falling apart and his new fortune is based upon it.
RICO was written in broad terms. To state a claim, a plaintiff must allege four elements: (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity… Each element of a RICO claim requires additional analysis: an “enterprise” is marked by association and control; a “pattern” requires a showing of “continuity” — continuous and related behavior that amounts to, or poses a threat of, continued criminal violations; and “racketeering activity” involves the violation of designated federal laws …
Another Corporate Bailout: Obama Goes Nuclear
By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Radio | February 24, 2010
Opponents of nuclear power have now joined the ranks of those who are bitterly disappointed with President Obama, who is proposing to triple loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry. Barack Obama has long been allied with nuclear power, as have his two closest confidants, political advisor David Axelrod and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago-based Exelon corporation, the biggest nuclear power operator in the United States, was a major Obama campaign contributor. Obama’s support for nuclear power has never been a secret. If environmentalist Obamites were surprised by their president’s all-out push for nukes, they have only their own self-delusions to blame.
Back during the campaign, when Obama was getting huge checks from Big Nukes and Big Coal, environmentalists were giving him a political blank check for no other reason than Obama wasn’t George Bush. But it turns out that regarding nuclear power, Obama is worse than George Bush – three times worse. By boosting federal loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors from $18.5 to $54 billion, Obama is attempting to bring back to life an industry that has been all but dead for almost three decades. More than just a bailout, Obama is determined to pull off a nuclear resurrection.
The demise of U.S. nuclear power is generally dated to the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant in March, 1979. But nuclear power has always been a failed business model in the U.S. Construction costs consistently run amok, at three, four and five times advertised. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that loans for nuclear plant construction have a more than fifty percent chance of never being repaid. Environmental opposition to nuclear power is not the reason the industry has been moribund for 30 years. Nuclear power was all but dead because private capital saw the industry as a bad risk. So Wall Street helped elect a president who would put up the people’s money. With public dollars reviving the industry, Chicago-based Exelon’s stock should shoot through the roof. Wall Street can prepare to process billions of dollars in new loans, knowing it doesn’t stand to lose one cent because the public is taking all the financial risk.
The public is also taking all the risk for the health hazards of nuclear power. Private industry will not insure against accidents, which could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. The public will ultimately pay for any cleanup.
Late-stage finance capitalism, like nuclear power, can only exist as a parasite on the larger society. The people pay all the costs: financial, safety, and health. The investment class puts up no money unless guaranteed a payback plus big profits. This isn’t about the environment. It’s about Wall Street stealing the people blind, through their bought-and-paid-for servants in the Congress and the White House. It’s really a crime story.
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